A deep morning. The theme of God's incomparable power and kindness towards us was threaded all the way through from opening worship, to Ruth's sermon on Daniel 5, to the awe-filled response.

I took 'To God be the glory' down a step to F. That's probably a kinder key than G to open up the congregation's voice. This hymn does such a good job of making us conscious of our position before God as we come to worship.

I've been aiming to use more non-mainstream-music-industry songs at Kings. I noticed last year that even though I'm an independent songwriter, in a collective of independent songwriters, and know lots of independent songwriters, I actually tend to mainly teach songs distributed by Integrity Music. Nothing against those songs at all, but there are great songs elsewhere as well. I put together a short playlist of great independently-published congregational songs and challenged myself to teach some of them in the months ahead. 'Only A Holy God' is the first one up.

We've actually been singing this at Evening Worship for a little while. One of our worship leaders picked it up as soon as I passed it around, but this was the debut at Morning Worship. Since it was the beginning of a set, I taught the song formally. It seemed to go pretty well! And it flowed wonderfully into the themes of 'This is amazing grace'.

Already in the first set we were engaging pretty deeply with God's power and grace to us in the Cross. Then someone read from 1 Corinthians 1 about the foolishness of the Cross and the effect on the room was tangible. 'Crowns' articulated the mood perfectly.

Ruth's sermon was powerful, calling us to remember the greatness of God and his sovereignty in history. The whole room was ready to worship in response. The closing songs just soared. There were actual cheers as we started 'Awesome God', and following a great contribution from the congregation, we closed with a quiet and resolute version of 'I'll stand'.

To be honest I was hardly holding it together from we sang "And he will come again in glory/To judge the living and the dead" in 'Holy'. My voice and my heart were wrecked as I gave myself to worship.

2005

About

Chris Juby is director of worship at King's Church in Durham, England and a songwriter with Resound Worship. His songs cover a wide range of styles and themes, written to engage hearts with the truths of the Christian faith and to lead the Church in worship. More